Service of the Heir: An Edinburgh Murder (Murray of Letho Book 3)

by Lexie Conyngham

  ‘So you say. But moral force is very weak, you know, in this modern world, particularly amongst our class. For some peasant, perhaps, or minor lawyer, or the pathetic tutor to some obscure peer, morals may indeed have some effect. But I am none of those things.’

  Murray felt his face go scarlet. His mouth was as dry as chalk. He heard a sound behind him and though he could not – would not – move, he knew that Harry and Lady Sarah had just left the room. Were they abandoning him, or did they simply know that the fight was over? Now he did not want to move as he knew Dundas would see him shaking. He was suddenly so angry he could not speak.

  ‘Feel free to stay for supper, Charles: don’t feel that the door is barred you because of this, ah, misjudgement on your part. I am always happy to guide young men who are starting out in the world, whatever their errors.’

  His dreadful hospitality finally gave Murray the escape he needed. He summoned all his strength, bowed more stiffly than he would have believed possible – his whole spine seemed to have been set in stone – and left the room.

  As he left, a clatter in the hall made him pause, wondering what was to be done to him. Harry and Lady Sarah were there, too, stuck like statues, bewildered. At the door there was some kind of confusion: a manservant was drawing the doors back wide, while two bearers struggled to haul in a sedan chair, and two well-wrapped figures agitated about it. The female seemed faintly familiar, but the male ... someone who had been at his father’s funeral? The bearers were red-hot and sweating, and one was swearing with steady determination. The female was urging them on, the male trying to back off from the muddle and preserve some dignity. The whole hall was soaking, and looked like the latter end of a rout.

  At last, with an inevitable snap, the door behind Murray opened again and Dundas appeared.

  ‘What in the Devil’s name is going on now? Can a man have no peace in his own house?’

  The male visitor turned and removed his hat, and Dundas, in a mixture of relief and disbelief, strode to him.

  ‘Ebenezer Hammond! Thank goodness. I am sorry you have arrived in the midst of what seems to be an invasion.’

  Ebenezer Hammond, thought Charles, the head of the Society of Writers to the Signet, greatest notary in Edinburgh. Someone before whom even Dundas must bow. And he did, but Hammond did not return more than the least nod of his head. The chair shot forward into the hallway with a final surge, and was thumped down on the tile floor. Two tiles cracked. There was a moment of awful silence, during which the bearers quietly shook hands as their coats dripped.

  ‘Mr. Dundas,’ said Ebenezer Hammond in chill tones, ‘I am asked to present you to Miss Christian Gordon of Balkiskan.’

  The door of the chair shot open, and Miss Gordon was revealed in all her glory and a huge lace bonnet on a sugarloaf of white hair. She was painted and powdered almost beyond recognition, and there was a look in her eyes that could have scalded you in a snowstorm. Murray was reminded irresistibly of Henry’s ferrets, and she looked just as likely to nip.

  The woman, whom Murray now recognised as Jessie, the maid, bustled about her, and there was suddenly a notable aroma of brandy. Miss Gordon batted her away at last and Jessie turned to see Murray standing there. She moved out of the way and over to join him.

  ‘The first time she’s been out in donkey’s years,’ she whispered to him. ‘It took four water caddies to get her down the stair. And the two chairmen. My!’ she finished, and took a nip of brandy herself.

  But Murray suddenly realised that Dundas had not spoken since Miss Gordon had appeared. He stood with a face like stone, absolutely stunned.

  ‘You’d be my cousin, then?’ demanded Miss Gordon, in a tone striking for its disappointment. ‘Maybe if you’d ever bothered to visit you’d have found it harder to convince yourself I was dead. But I’m not, as you can see – and I want my land back.’

  ‘I –’ choked Dundas – a man so much at a loss that it almost made up for all the time he had seemed so over-confident.

  ‘The evidence has been examined, Mr. Dundas. You had no right in the land you sold to the Council.’ Ebenezer Hammond was glacial.

  ‘It – I’ve just this minute discovered the misunderstanding myself,’ gasped Dundas, powder white. ‘Mr. Murray here, he came to tell me. That apprentice of John Pollock’s – he told me she had died. He was the one who said it. He said he would draw up all the documents for me, and I’d have her land.’

  ‘Address me directly, you impudent scamp!’ growled Miss Gordon, in a tone that sent shivers down Murray’s spine. ‘Dinna dare talk about me as if I’m dead! You’re aware now I’m not!’

  ‘It will be rectified immediately, ma’am,’ Dundas found himself saying. ‘All reparations will be made.’

  ‘With what, Father?’

  Murray jumped. Harry rarely spoke out like that. Miss Gordon jerked her head round to see who had spoken. Harry nodded to her, but addressed his father again.

  ‘With what will you make reparations? You’ve told me we’ve no money.’

  ‘Hush, Harry: that is a matter for private conversation,’ said his father firmly.

  ‘For private conversation, is it?’ Harry swallowed audibly. ‘Would that be the same private conversation that covers the subject of the people you’ve had murdered to cover this scandal?’

  Jessie and Miss Gordon gasped. Murray felt himself reeling, and leaned back against the parlour doorpost. The situation was out of his control, but not necessarily the worse for that. Mr. Hammond drew himself up to his admittedly diminutive height, and brought out a pen and a notebook.

  ‘I see that the situation is much worse than I had suspected. I must take the names of all those here and I shall be speaking to all of you in due course –’

  ‘Never mind speaking, Mr. Hammond!’ snapped Miss Gordon. With a clattering shriek of metal, she was suddenly holding a shining sword in what looked like an expert hand. Murray recognised it as the one from her mantelpiece. Dundas backed off sharply and Lady Sarah screamed.

  It seemed to be the first that Miss Gordon had noticed her. She leaned out of the chair, still keeping the sword at the ready, and beckoned her forward. Lady Sarah, hesitant as ever, stepped up to the chair. Miss Gordon gestured her to bend down towards her, and looked hard at her.

  ‘I’d heard you were a beauty. You were a bonny bairn. But you look as if he’s given you a hard enough life.’ She sat back, and thought for a moment. ‘Will you come and bide with me a while? I have no kin left but you, and while I might not take to you at all, I’d like to give you the chance.’

  Lady Sarah seemed to take her first deep breath for twenty years. She gazed down at Miss Gordon.

  ‘Would you take my son Harry, too?’

  ‘Is that him?’ Miss Gordon regarded him briefly. ‘Aye, I would.’

  ‘Then I’ll come.’ Lady Sarah walked straight to the front door, in only a shawl as she was, and went straight out.

  ‘Sarah!’ cried Dundas, completely taken aback.

  ‘Mother!’ cried Harry. ‘May I wait on you?’ he snapped at Ebenezer Hammond, and when Hammond nodded slightly, Harry ran after his mother.

  ‘Well, I think my work here is done,’ remarked Miss Gordon, with a chuckle. ‘See to it that I get my lands back, even if he swings for murder,’ she said to Hammond. She gave Dundas a hard stare. ‘Aye, he looks like a murderer, right enough. Vain and a coward. I’ve seen the like. Right, Jessie,’ she called to the maid, ‘whip up these chairmen and let us be off. Our guests will be there before us if we’re not careful, and my cousin will need some warm brandy on her arrival.’ Jessie closed the door of the chair, and Miss Gordon stuck her head out of the window, even though her hair and bonnet mostly remained in the chair. ‘Mr. Murray, call again any time. I thank you for your interest: you have preserved the Balkiskan lands from a true scoundrel.’

  The bearers reluctantly pulled themselves away from the wall where they had left two broad wet patches on the paint. Murray could see that it
might take as long for them to exit as it had for them to enter, and he darted past them and out into the street, all but falling down the front steps. Harry and Lady Sarah were nowhere in sight. At least they were going to be welcomed with a glass of brandy. A glass of brandy, he thought, and headed down North St. Andrew Street for home, with only the thought of a glass of brandy in his head.

  He did not notice a figure slipping through the crowds in the square to follow him.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The brandy was certainly welcome. Murray sat in the study, feeling the warmth of the spirit soak slowly into him. The fire was hot, but somehow even now the cold would not go away. Robbins and Mary watched him in concern.

  ‘But he still wouldn’t tell me about Jamie,’ he finished, having tried to put the last hour into some kind of logical order. He held the glass tightly, afraid that he might drop it from unfeeling fingers. Through the glass the pads of his fingers could be seen yellow-white, like dead flesh.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Mary.

  ‘He says that he did not have Jamie killed. He says that he had no reason to do so.’

  Mary sighed. Robbins frowned, but was silent.

  The front doorbell rang. Mary rose, hurriedly, as Robbins went to answer it.

  ‘What will you do?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll wait and see what Ebenezer Hammond does, I suspect: I’ll need to talk to him.’

  Robbins returned, with a note in his hand.

  ‘It is Mr Patrick Armstrong, sir. Are you quite well enough to see him? And there was a letter from Fife, too – I should have mentioned it before.’ He held it out on a tray and Murray took it, expecting to see something from Letho. Instead it was Henry Scoggie’s careful hand. Feeling briefly rather touched, Murray slipped it on to the parlour table and answered Robbins.

  ‘Well enough? Yes, of course. Thank you, Mary.’ He rose, stiffly. ‘Patrick? What on earth can he want?’

  Mary waited until Patrick had been shown in, then curtseyed and left. Robbins stayed to pour the guest some brandy, then bowed and followed Mary.

  ‘Now, what can I do for you?’ asked Murray, succeeding in sounding friendly. ‘I thought you had classes.’

  ‘I do. I have mathematics,’ said Patrick shortly. ‘But this is more important.’

  ‘More important than mathematics?’ Murray was amused. Patrick’s pale, gingery face reddened.

  ‘I know people think I have nothing but numbers in my head, but sometimes I notice other things, too. Now, you’ve been trying to find out why your father died, haven’t you? and why your stable boy was murdered. Scoggie wouldn’t talk about it, so I reckon you’ve found your answer. But you have not.’

  ‘What?’ said Murray. He glanced at Henry’s letter on the table. What was in it? ‘What answer do you think I have found?’

  ‘But do you believe you have the answer, do you not?’ Patrick was becoming even more intense than usual. Behind his glasses, his eyes were large, and his fingers told off the rosary of his watch chain links as he waited for Murray to answer. It took a moment or two.

  ‘Yes, I do believe I have the answer,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps not all of it, but –’

  ‘But he did not do it,’ insisted Patrick. ‘Look, I know where he was on the night your father was injured, and when your stable boy was killed he was at your father’s burial, as we all were. I walked alongside him myself.’

  ‘But you walked with your father,’ said Murray, remembering.

  ‘Exactly. He was there all the time.’

  Murray sat back, confused.

  ‘You think that I think that your father murdered my father and Jamie?’ he asked, trying to clarify the conversation. Patrick nodded impatiently, and went on before Murray could stop him.

  ‘I know you think he was out and unaccounted for on the night your father had his injuries: you’ve been asking around and people talk. But I do know where he was, and I can tell you, but my mother and sisters must never know, never.’ He glared at Murray. There seemed to be no way to stop him. Patrick took a breath. ‘You see, my father is in the habit of taking a walk in the evening, just walking around, it used to be, sometimes alone and sometimes with friends. Sometimes he went out with Mr. Murray, it is true, but not recently. Just before Christmas, it was, I was told by some of the men in my class that they had seen my father when they were on one of their evening debauches, and I was quite surprised. But they said no, they had seen him in the Cowgate, late one evening. Well, I knew that my father would not be walking in the Cowgate for the good of his health, and that evening, when we were alone for a moment after supper, I mentioned what the men had said and asked him if it were true. He said that it was, but that it was also quite true that he had not been walking there for pleasure, he had gone to discover the accuracy of a story that was being told by someone he was defending in court. My father will never be a brilliant advocate,’ he said, slightly sadly, ‘but he is meticulous, and does not like to encourage his clients to lie.’ All the time his fingers counted and recounted the links on his watch chain.

  ‘I believed him, but I was surprised when a few days later the men in my class said they had seen him again. The impression he had given me was that the first visit had been successful, so I wondered why he had needed to return to that place. Then I remembered, too, that the previous night my father had been wearing one of his best waistcoats, which struck me as unusual on a business visit to the Cowgate.

  ‘Well, then there was Hogmanay, and I did not see my father wear the waistcoat over that period. It was a very noticeable one, in a kind of deep pink with quite valuable enamel buttons. They came off an older waistcoat of my grandfather’s, and my mother sewed them on to this one. He normally wore it on special occasions, but I have seen no sign of it for some time.’

  Murray began to put some facts together, slowly in his cold mind.

  ‘After Hogmanay he began his evening walks again, and one evening I was on my way home from classes when I chanced to see him, once more heading towards the Cowgate. I made up my mind to follow him, and saw him enter a first floor flat with a forestair. A woman let him in, and she was not a maid doing the service for others.

  ‘I said nothing for some time, but I began to grow worried after your father’s death because you seemed to be trying to find out more, and I had no wish for you to ask my mother questions that might lead to her asking more of her own. I had followed him several times, including, by chance, the night your father’s accident took place, and knew that while he had not killed, he had sinned in other ways that might hurt my family more. On Monday morning, therefore, when he returned from the law courts to change for dinner, I challenged him, and he confessed. He did not, though, I must admit, confess to quite what I had steeled myself to expect. He admitted visiting a woman in the Cowgate, and admitted, indeed, to having a deep regard for her, but he strenuously denied that it had gone any further than that. She is a gentlewoman, apparently, who has had some financial difficulties. She is also young, and my father claims that she bears a remarkable resemblance to my own mother when he first met her. He had been attracted to her for that very reason, and had been trying to help her – not financially, for he could not afford that – but with advice and friendship.’ He took another deep breath. ‘I believe him, but that is not to say that such facts, made public, would be generally believed.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ said Murray. ‘And if you believe him innocent, who have such an interest in defending your mother, then he must be so.’

  ‘My mother is not always as kind as she might be ...’ Patrick seemed to remember himself, and went on: ‘We went on to dinner at the Thomsons’, and you showed me that button. It is identical to the ones on my father’s waistcoat. When I went home, I made an inspection and discovered that one button was indeed missing. I realised then that you had found out about this gentlewoman and had established in your own mind that my father may have murdered to keep the matter secret, and you hoped to f
orce some reaction from me.’ He sucked in another breath and sat back in his chair. He looked as if he needed the brandy, but did not reach for it.

  ‘I regret you felt it necessary to tell me this,’ said Murray slowly, ‘and can only reassure you that it will go no further. I have not, in fact, suspected your father, nor did I know of his association with anyone in the Cowgate. The button,’ he reached into his pocket and drew it out, ‘was found by my stable boy in the street, and had no meaning for me. His mother had thought it might belong to a gentleman amongst my father’s acquaintance, and asked me to return it as she thought it valuable. Evidently she was correct.’ He handed the little rose and gold object back to Patrick, who looked at it in bewilderment as it lay in his palm.

  ‘But you said,’ he stammered, not looking at Murray, ‘you said you had come to a decision concerning the identity of the murderer.’

  ‘Well, yes, I have,’ Murray agreed. ‘But it is not your father. And the killer has confessed, to all but the murder of my stable boy, which he denies and which your father, clearly, did not commit as he was, as you said, at the burial.’

  ‘Then,’ said Patrick, standing up, ‘I have been very stupid.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Murray, rising too. ‘I have been blundering around like a fool, trying to solve puzzles as if they were Latin translations, and not remembering that people, unlike words, are susceptible to injury. I am very sorry that I have caused you distress.’ He held out a hand, which Patrick, after a second, shook with his own clammy palm still quaking. ‘Why don’t you sit again and have your brandy?’ Murray suggested. As Patrick sat obediently, the door opened and Robbins entered with a note on a tray. Murray took it and unfolded it. It was written in Robbins’ own upright hand.

  ‘My acquaintance, the manservant at the Dundas househould, has just called to say that Mr. Dundas has been arrested and imprisoned on the charge of murdering Mr. Murray, Mr. Muir and Mr. Andrew Muir.’

  Arrested. Charged. Not convicted – would that follow? Murray found himself seated with no clear idea of how he had reached his chair. Robbins refilled his brandy glass. Cold water seemed to ebb and flow in his head.